Alabama's Republican-controlled legislature is systematically undoing the gains achieved during the civil rights movement, a new article contends, pointing to things such as voter ID laws, cutting public assistance and refusing to expand Medicaid as proof of what the writer calls "the new racism."

The "systematic way in which Republican majorities in Southern statehouses are undoing so many of the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement suggests that the end is nigh. Whether it's by imposing new voter-ID laws, slashing public assistance, refusing Medicaid expansion, or repealing progressive legislation like North Carolina's Racial Justice Act, the GOP-controlled governments of Southern states are behaving in ways that are at times as hostile to the interests of their African American citizens as Jim Crow Democrats were half a century ago."

There are plenty of other interesting takeaways from the article, too, including some interesting comments from Alabama legislators:

"The Republicans have demonstrated that we can be down here and that we can be powerless,"Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma.

"I brought the white folks to the table, and he brought the blacks to the table,"former President Pro Tem of the Alabama Senate Lowell Barron, a Democrat, describing his relationship with Sanders.

"People weren't voting against me in 2010, they were voting against that black man in the White House,"Barron explaining his Senate race defeat.

"When I got to be chair of the budget committee, there were a lot of these Confederate programs and so forth that were funded in the budget, and the black caucus really wanted to take a lot of those out. My position was: We'll meet 'em halfway. I'm not gonna take the historical Confederate projects out. The only thing I'm gonna do is insist that we have some African American historic projects,"Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery.

"Anybody who denies that Barack Obama's unpopularity in Alabama didn't help Republicans come to power is just not being truthful about it,"Republican State Senator Cam Ward.

"He's entitled to his opinion, but he's wrong,"Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey responding to allegations from Sen. Quinton Ross that her cutting him off was "almost racist."

"The Alabama Republican Party wants it so that, whenever you see a person with a D next to his or her name on TV, that person is black,"Bradley Davidson, the former executive director of the Alabama Democratic Party.